Our third year began with a larger focus on recruiting more FIRST teams in the state of North Carolina. We did all we could to help start teams close to us in Raleigh, Durham, and Oxford as well as a team three hours away in Rowan County. This included personal visits as well as making presentations to businesses and communities in hopes of getting support for these new teams. We also decided to expand our efforts by helping to spread the word of the FIRST Lego League program in North Carolina. We volunteered to host the first State FLL Tournament and our high school students set out to mentor 3 FLL teams in the Raleigh area. Additionally, we still planned to enter all facets of the robotics competition! That year’s competition had additional challenges for us right from the start.

Our major sponsor, IBM, substantially lowered their financial support and in an area severely hit by the downturn in the technology industry, we were forced to findadditional sponsorship for our team. This was especially important as the costs of mentoring the other teams and hosting the FLL tournaments were included in our team budget. We were very excited when Red Hat became our second major sponsor. This happened after our SRHS team members made a presentation at their company’s global quarterly meeting! Another huge change for us was in the team make-up. Many of our team members had graduated the year before. We were proud that most of them went on to study engineering at area universities. One female team member even received a scholarship to the NC State College of Engineering because of her involvement with FIRST. However, this meant that the remaining FIRST team members had to step up and take on more responsibility. We worked very hard to recruit a more diverse team to echo our school community. It helped that many of our alumni returned to mentor and support our team. This was all in addition to the continued support and leadership of NCSU students working with our team as part of their senior design project.

The Lego League tournament was a huge success. It was an incredible experience for us because SRHS team members and SRHS alumni were responsible for almost every aspect of organizing and running the tournament. The technical director was even a former FIRST team member – having graduated only the year before. We maintained the high-energy atmosphere we had seen at the FIRST competitions by providing music and entertainment. Along with the help of our parents and other volunteers from the school community the FLL teams from all over the state of NC were able to participate in a state tournament. We really felt like we were giving back to others what had been given to us through FIRST and encouraging a whole new generation to join not just our "family" but the whole FIRST organization.

After the tournament, we renewed our efforts to mentor and support the other NC FIRST teams. Prior to kickoff, we held a daylong workshop for the rookie North Carolina teams. We gave them insight into many of the mistakes we made, hoping they could avoid them. We included not only technical topics, but also some hints on the Chairman's Award, AutoDesk competition, outreach, and fundraising. We referred some of our committed sponsors to them to help them get started. We had planned to host a kickoff party at NCSU for all the NC teams but on the day of the kickoff, like out first year, the weather got in our way. During the kickoff weekend we received eighteen inches of snow! Our plans had to change. Again, our parents came through. A parent volunteer offered to drive one of our teacher leaders to the remote kickoff in Richmond so that she could present at the Rookie workshop. Although we couldn’t hold our party back in Raleigh, we kept in close contact with the new teams, offering support, parts, and encouragement.

Once again, all of our "family" worked hard together to meet our own competition deadlines. Our returning alumni were a huge help to us, bringing their experience to the team, but this time in an advisory role. Some of our "family" had "grown up"! We continued to learn from the engineers that worked with our team from IBM as well as the NCSU students assigned to help our team. We were lucky indeed to have such support. The administration at school and the PTSA also continued to help meet our needs. We reciprocated by continuing to represent FIRST and the school by presenting at many fairs, conferences and association meetings. At one point, we were invited by FIRST to present at a conference in the Western part of the state - over 6 hours away. The SRHS students were beginning to get more and more comfortable speaking to large groups. We believe in FIRST and are happy to talk about it on any occasion.

At the NASA/VCU regional, we again had great success. We couldn’t believe it when we were again awarded the Daimler Chrysler Team Spirit Award. Our students had worked hard to design a more sophisticated robot and an NCSU student had developed a real-time strategy program for PDAs. This all paid off when we were able to pick other teams to be on an alliance for the final rounds and we were able to advance to the semi-finals. Our team was humbled when we received special recognition from FIRST for our efforts to spread the message of FIRST in North Carolina. Pattie Cook and other representatives from the FIRST organization visited our pit to present us with a certificate signed by Dean Kamen. We didn’t think that things could get any better, but they did. During the closing ceremonies we were stunned to learn that we had received the Regional Chairman’s award. After all our hard work, our dream had come true! We truly were honored, as we knew of the other deserving teams at our regional. We practically ran all the way back to Raleigh to tell everyone our good news!

At nationals, being a part of the preview session once again honored our animation team. We are so proud of our animation team! Once home, our team was again recognized by the community as one of our engineers from IBM was named a finalist for "Volunteer of the Year" by the Wake County PTSA. All of us felt we had a truly remarkable season. We felt satisfied not only for our own successes, but also for all the different ways we had tried to help others experience participating in FIRST. Our "family" had started branching out, growing, and making a difference.